


and walk

by pprfaith



Series: Author's Favourites [31]
Category: Christian Lore, Original Work
Genre: Bible Retold, Child Abuse, Escape, F/M, Feminist Themes, I don't know what I did but I don't want to spoil it either, Immortality, Introspection, Motherhood, Religion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Retelling, Self Care, Women Being Awesome, saving yourself, self love, spousal abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 20:50:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19857841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: “You have two good legs,” she tells another woman, months later. “You can use them to walk. Just walk away.”After her tale is done, she walks and just keeps walking and doesn't spit at the sight of any church, although she wants to.





	and walk

**Author's Note:**

> I made a thing and I have no idea what it is, hence the lack of tags. I hope I covered the triggery stuff, but if not, tell me so. And let me know what you think about the rest, too, okay?

+

She likes walking.

The motion of setting one foot in front of the other, of moving under her own power. The idea that, if she keeps at it, she can get anywhere. Anywhere at all. 

Often, she simply walks out her door in the morning, meanders through the city, the fields, the woods all day, this way and that, and returns in the evening.

Sometimes, she simply walks out her door in the morning and never returns, keeps going until her feet hit soil they have never touched, until she finds a new place, where she can be new, too.

+

She skates to work. 

It’s not quite walking under her own power, but it’s faster and she loves the feel of the wind in her hair. 

So she skates down a crowded sidewalk at eight AM, grinning at the few yelps she gets as people miss her approach and have to jump aside. They don’t have to know that she’s fully prepared to brake for them. 

Some grumble. Some curse. Some laugh. 

A few do double takes as they look after her, at her face, too old to be riding around on a skateboard, at the silver in her hair. 

Today, a woman with crow’s feet around her mouth and eyes, lurid pink hair and colorful vines sneaking across her skin, raises her hand and they slap each other five with thrilled laughter as she passes, mutual appreciation stretching between them for a moment until the tether breaks with a snap. 

Her hair flutters. She closes her eyes. 

+

She doesn’t care about the weather, when she walks. Sun or rain or snow, it’s all the same to her, just an obstacle to climb, just something to slow her down. It doesn’t stop her. 

She doesn’t let it – never has. 

Instead she squints her eyes against the glare and finds beauty in the way the world glows in the heat. She ducks her head against the spray and studies mountains of clouds out of the corner of her eye and lets snowflakes land on her hands and licks them off. 

She can do these things because there is no-one there to tell her she can’t. Because she knows beauty when she sees it and she has long ago chosen to revere only living things. Tangible things. 

The power of her legs to take her anywhere, the glint of sunlight on broken glass, the taste of freshly fallen snow. Those things are hers and no-one can take them from her.

+

The second-hand shop she works at has given up on the edge between kitschy and reasonable and taken the dive into full-on ridicule. This month, the display window is crammed with neon wigs draped over flowery teapots. Various fur stoles and feather boas in dodgy colors are wound around it all. 

It’s tastefully awful. She spent half a day making it and her boss roared with laughter when he saw it. 

She dusts in her downtime, with a real feather duster whose leather-wrapped grip and metal studded pommel implies that it wasn’t meant to be used for dusting, really. She whips it over old albums, wedding dresses, furniture, costume jewelry, baby clothing and a cradle decorated with a million glow-in-the-dark stars. All of it is old and used and has a history and her free hand trails over it, feeling the people who have loved these things, or hated them, but used them anyway. She feels for the story and age of them.

It makes her feel less lonely, to know there are other things, beside her, who are old and used and still, somehow, here. 

+

It’s a half day today and she spends her lunch watching kids on a playground before grabbing a box of yesterday’s pastries from her favorite bakery and heading to the women’s shelter. 

They only have a few women there, at the moment, long-term residents. There is no new terror in the off-white rooms. She reads to the kids for a while, teaches them hand games none of the other adults know. They involve slapping and clapping and snapping and chanting and sound almost like a song, when done right, almost like some sort of spell.

Two of the mothers are watching, sipping coffee from mugs she brought from the shop ages ago, flowery and chipped and gold-rimmed and lovely. 

“I have four kids, and none of them ever played games like that. That stuff looks complicated. Where’d you learn it?”

She shrugs as she leaves the children to it, reclaims her own cup. “I made them up for my own children.”

Michelle, the younger of the two women, frowns. “I didn’t know you-“ she cuts herself off. It’s not polite, here, to ask. Some stories are not meant for telling. They do not dig. 

She sips, smiles, shakes her head. “It’s fine. I…story time?”

“If you want,” Anna, the older one, offers. 

She shrugs. “My father picked my husband for me and my husband expected me to obey him in all things. I didn’t mind for a while, because I didn’t know it was wrong. There was no-one to tell me. But eventually, I … learned.” She smiles, wryly. Repetitions have worn these parts smooth, like a stone handled too often, like old glass in the sea. 

Still. Still. “It didn’t matter. He was my husband. And my oldest boy was… just like him. Not my younger one, though, oh no. He was a sweet thing, clung to my apron strings all day.”

Michelle titters at the turn of phrase. It’s old now. Out of fashion. Whoops. 

“His big brother picked on him something terrible. It wasn’t his fault, really. His father wasn’t a good example. But one day… one day my baby lost it. He just got so angry, and his brother wouldn’t stop even though he begged and he… he hurt his big brother.”

When she closes her eyes, she still sees the blood. It never gets any less red. Red like apples. 

Red like sin.

She’s never believed in the concept. 

Both women flinch. Michelle’s eye turn to her two daughters, their hands slapping clumsily against each other as they repeat a song in a langue they don’t speak. 

“What’d you do, girl?” Anna asks. 

She smiles again, but this time there are teeth in it. “I did what any mother would do. “I stood in front of my son. I took his punishment. And then I swore to myself, never again. And I packed up my babies and I walked.”

One foot in front of the other, under her own power, all the world open to them.

“Good on you,” the others murmur, their expressions not quite pleased, but some darker cousin of it. Satisfied, maybe. 

“Where’s your boys, now?”

“My oldest is with his grandfather,” she confesses. She doesn’t want him there, but he’s out of her reach and has been for a long time. “My baby’s with an old friend.”

She doesn’t say ‘I don’t know what I would have done without him.’ Doesn’t say, ‘He helped me see what was happening to me.’ Too trite, too simple a way to describe what he did. What he gave her. 

Gave all of them, here, now, really. All these women who saw their worth, saw that there was evil being done to them, and acted. 

The others, of course, are scattered all over, in every country, in every city. 

She smiles again, involuntarily. 

Anna frowns a little and studies her with new eyes. She wonders what she sees. A woman with dark skin and darker eyes, a few wrinkles, a little silver, but still firm, still strong. Cheap clothes, a few piercings, no make-up. She doesn’t believe in plucking and shaving and painting, in doing for others. Not in this way. Does she look like a mother? Does she look like a divorcee, like someone who suffered and lost and gave her children away? Does she look like the things she carries?

She shrugs, dismisses it with the ease of practice and stands to correct the girl’s pronunciation.

No-one stops her. 

+

It was hard, the first time. So hard.

She packed up what she could, the memory of red newly painted on the insides of her eyelids, the rage of her husband, her father, ringing in her ears, shouting of sin, of crime, of murder. 

It was so hard to leave everything she knew, even if she knew that what she knew was wrong, was unfair, unjust. 

Evil.

No human being should be made subservient to another. No brother should pick on another until the only way he knew to protect himself was to lash out in blind fury. No father should condone his son hurting another. 

No father should ask his daughter to lie still and take what she is given.

Still.

The first time is hard – or so she thinks. Until she takes the first step and then the second and the pack on her back settles, the small, sticky hands in hers clench tighter and her son – her oldest now – looks at her over the crown of one of his sister’s heads with nothing but relief in his gaze as he follows.

After that, it’s the easiest thing in the world.

+

“You have two good legs,” she tells another woman, months later. She comes into the shop often, always with new bruises and a too quiet toddler clinging to her. “You can use them to walk. Just walk away.”

She slips a card in with the change. It doesn’t say ‘women’s shelter’ in bold print because they have all been hurt and they are smart. Instead it’s scribbled by hand, a phone number and a cheery ‘call me about that recipe, XO Debbie’. 

Harmless, see? Just another woman, just being polite. 

The girl – and it is a girl, really, barely twenty, stares at her, wide-eyed. She winks at her and gives the toddler the Mars bar from her own lunch. 

They show up at the shelter three days later and Anna hugs the girl until her tears have stopped. 

“You’re so brave,” she whispers, “so very brave.”

+

There is a man in the park across the street, in a bespoke suit so expensive, even a blind man would recognize its worth. What it stands for. Power and riches and dominion. 

The man wears it like a t-shirt and jeans, casual, powerful. His hair is black and his jaw is strong and he looks… terrifying, really. 

She slips her skateboard up and under one arm as she approaches, putting a little swagger in her step, letting her jean-clad hips dance, the edges of her ragged leather jacket swing. It’s a seduction that isn’t, that never has been, a joke just between them. 

He is talking to another man, less gilded, less smooth, shaking hands, making deals. Then he dismisses him, turning to face her without hesitation or surprise. 

She closes the distance between them, drops the board to skid into the edge of the grass and get stuck, and wraps her arms around his neck as he hugs her tightly, lifting her up and spinning her around. 

“Hello, sweetling,” he purrs, a soft, sweet sound. Warm and close and just a little sibilant, the fist friendly voice she ever heard. 

“Hello, old Scratch,” she counters, smiling into his shoulder, inhaling him. He smells like embers and down. He always does. 

He lets her go, spins her around with one hand. “Oh, this century’s been good to you. Look at you, you’re gorgeous.” A frown. “Although I’m not sure your pants need that many holes.”

She plucks at one on her thigh, laughs. “Please, this body bore more children than anyone remembers and it’s still rocking. I’m absolutely going to show it off.”

Head thrown back, he laughs and unlike the man she once called husband, he accepts her decisions without a word of complaint. His gift to her, always, is choice. True choice, not the limited options she enjoyed under the rule of her first husband. Not choice held at bay by threat of punishment. 

If she wanted to streak naked through this very park, he’d hold her clothes and cheer her on. 

It’s why she loves him. 

She tells him so, easily, and his eyes flash bright gold as his smile grows secret. “And I you, sweetling. So, what are you up to, these days?”

A shrug. “Helping women, taking care of old things, walking.”

“Same as always, then.”

She rolls her eyes. “The last time we talked, I was a nurse in a war zone. I am at least a little versatile, don’t sell me short!”

“Helping people, taking care of things, moving. I don’t know, sweetling. If the shoe fits – “

He trails off, waggling his eyebrows. She snorts. “What brings you here?”

“Business,” he admits, waving a hand in the direction the other man went. “Pleasure,” he motions at her. “And a request.”

She sighs, already guessing. 

“Your boy has been asking about you. He requests that you please, finally, return his curse to him, so that you may rest and he may do penance.”

“Self-defense is no crime and it is a mother’s duty to stand in front of her children. Tell him that. And tell him that I’m not ready to rest. Not while –“

He cuts her off, fondly, “- there is still ground untrodden and paths unwalked. Not while there is still new things to discover. Yes. You always say the same thing and have for the past six-thousand years. Still. I had to pass it on. He misses you. Your entire brood does.”

The ones with him. The ones who didn’t side with their father and grandfather.

They don’t talk about that, not really. They both know the pain of being cast out, of being abandoned, and they have both invented themselves anew from the ashes. They understand all too well.

With a shake of her head, she changes the subject. “Dinner?” she asks.

“I have heard of a very upscale restaurant close by. Want to scandalize them with me?” He grins and there are teeth in it. 

“Of course, old Scratch. Lead the way.”

She takes her skateboard into the restaurant. For effect. 

+

Later, later, when the stars have risen and disappeared into the light pollution, when they’re both over-fed and happy, when his tie is long gone and her hair a messy halo on the pillows, she curls into him, her head on his chest, above a heart that has been beating since before Creation and says, quietly, “Say my name, old Scratch. My real name.”

He is the only one who remember now, on Earth, and she knows he will give it to her, freely, like he gave her the apple, gave her knowledge and choice and freedom. Like he gave her aid when she asked him to hide her Cain, her sweet, broken Cain, and all the daughters who did not want to marry, all the boys who did not want to follow their father. 

Tucking her tight against the furnace of his body, he leans down just slightly and whispers, very gently, into her hair the soft, smooth syllables of her name. 

“Ah-vah,” he says, barely a breath of air, something innocent and sweet, something she hasn’t been since the juice of the most expensive fruit in all of human history ran down her chin. 

And then, because he knows her best, he adds, “Eve,” a little harder, a little sharper. 

A little more her, as she is now, ripped jeans and clever smiles.

She sighs, content, and melts into him.

+

In the morning, redressed and smoothed out, the Devil offers her a ride home. She kisses him fiercely, tells him to hug her babies and then lets herself out of the hotel room.

She walks. 

+


End file.
